Why women are watching rough porn

A recent study by a Harvard economist has blown away all the stereotypes that we may have had till now about women's porn preferences.

The PhD from Harvard, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, has also recently authored a book titled 'Everybody Lies' which is a very witty look at the world seen through what they search on the internet.

We all may lie to the world, to our friends and even to our partners. But, at the end of the day, we search on Google what we don't want the world to know; the kind of porn we like and the kind we don't. This led to the revelationary fact: Women like watching porn that features violence against women.

The analysis by Stephens-Davidowitz about our sexuality included analyzing data from sites like Pornhub. He could easily determine that women like watching girl-on-girl videos and about 20 per cent of porn watched by women is lesbian porn. Besides this, he confirmed that many women like to watch porn that's rough or infiltrates violence against them.

"Porn featuring violence against women is also extremely popular among women. It is far more popular among women than men. I hate saying that because misogynists seem to love this fact. Fantasy life isn't always politically correct," he said.

To understand this, we talked to Dr Avani Tiwari, psychiatrist, sex and relationships expert, who said that such porn preference of women could be due to two reasons, but is primarily due to the first one, which follow.

Firstly, porn is a means of fantasy fulfilment. Because we are getting modern and women are seeking equality and power, watching porn is no more taboo. Realization of power in real life is balanced by submission in fantasy.

Women prefer to be in command in real life and to be controlled in fantasy. Also, watching porn in which one is being dominated, abused and tied up doesn't have any consequences in real life. "It's fantasy. It ends there. You watch it and get away with it," she said.

Secondly, it refers back to the millennia of women subjugation. Dr Avani called this the concept of a 'collective consciousness' where women have faced subjugation for many millenniums. As a result, being submissive has become a part of their primal selves, their basic instinct. A decade or two of equality isn't enough to entirely replace history.

"The rate at which women watch violent porn is roughly the same in every part of the world. It isn't correlated with how women are treated," added Stephens-Davidowitz. But is it really possible to reach out to women who are domesticated, subjugated and/or live in rural regions of the world? Do they even have access to porn? There's a massive lack of research on this subject, said Dr Avani.